Johnny Depp Apologizes for Joking About Assassinating Donald Trump

23Jun

Johnny Depp apologized Friday for making flip remarks about assassinating the president. In a statement to People, the actor said, “I apologize for the bad joke I attempted last night in poor taste about President Trump. It did not come out as intended, and I intended no malice. I was only trying to amuse, not to harm anyone.”

Depp was the Glastonbury Festival’s inaugural guest at the new Cineramageddon drive-in theater, and he certainly gave the place a memorable launch. While introducing a screening of his 2004 movie “The Libertine” on Thursday night, the actor made inflammatory statements about President Trump.

“I think he needs help and there are a lot of wonderful dark, dark places he could go,” Depp said, according to the Guardian.

He then asked the crowd: “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”

The answer is 1865, when John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

“It is just a question — I’m not insinuating anything,” Depp assured the crowd. “By the way, this is going to be in the press. It will be horrible. I like that you are all a part of it.”

He also claimed that he wasn’t referring to himself, since he’s not really an actor.

“I lie for a living,” he clarified. “However, it has been a while and maybe it is time.”

White House officials were not amused.

“The joke is no laughing matter,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “These things are real.”

Conway called Depp a “nut job” and said his statement was “not a slip of the tongue” but rather a deliberate attempt to spread “vile” ideas that could “easily inflame lunatics who wish to bring harm.”

A Secret Service spokesman told The Post that the agency is “aware of the comment in question. For security reasons, we cannot discuss specifically nor in general terms the means and methods of how we perform our protective responsibilities.”

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